Seven Million People Have Diabetes In Pakistan

As many as 7 million people of Pakistan have diabetes while this number is likely to be doubled in 2030 if an effective awareness campaign can not be launched.

“Seven million people have diabetes in Pakistan”

These views were expressed by Prof Bilal Bin Younis, Consultant Endocrinologist and Head of Sakina Institute of Diabetes and Endocrine Research, Dr Imtiaz Hassan, Consultant Endocrinologist, Diabetic Institute of Pakistan, Ms. Helle Nielsen, Charg‚ d’Affaires, Embassy of Denmark in Pakistan, Rana Azfer, country head of Novo Nordisk (a multi national company) during a press briefing on “Increasing Burden of Diabetes in Pakistan” at a local hotel on Thursday.

The speakers focused on the rising burden and upcoming challenges in diabetes therapy shared that the current treatment options for diabetes were helping thousands of patients but with the progressive nature of the disease, new treatment options were always needed to overcome the existing challenges. They said population of Pakistan was living with diabetes due to stress, lifestyles and unbalanced diet and this number was increasing rapidly.

They said a large number of the patient did not know about their disease as they had never bothered for check up. The reasons behind the rise in the disease were use of unhealthy diet, increasing trend of junk and fast food, soft drinks, smoking, overweight, physical inactivity, stress and depression, changing sleeping patterns especially among young and lack of periodic check up of blood sugar level. They also said more than 415 million people had diabetes in the world while they expected that this number would be reached to 642 million during next four years.